JCPL Kids

OCTOBER 22, 2012

Goosebumps

Do you want to give yourself a fright this Halloween? If you haven’t picked up a Goosebumps book to read you’re really missing out! The original Goosebumps series was created in 1992 and is made up of 62 titles. Several other spinoffs of this series exist now too. Goosebumps books have been translated into 32 languages!

The author of the Goosebumps series is R.L. Stine. He was born on October 8, 1943 in Columbus Ohio. He became interested in scary stories after reading his first horror comic books at age eight and seeing many scary movies with his brother. He claims these were not scary to him but instead made him laugh. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1965 and made money after college by writing joke and humor books for kids.

He has won the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award three times and he made it into Guinness World Records in 2000 for writing the best-selling children’s series in history, at that time. Aside from Goosebumps books, Stine has created a number of other series’ for children including Rotten School, Nightmare Room, and Mostly Ghostly, among others.

Check out these Goosebumps titles, some of my personal favorites, or visit the library to find many others under J Fiction Stine.

Beware the Snowman: Jaclyn can’t figure out why her aunt moved them to a tiny village on the Arctic Circle or why the townspeople all have the same creepy-looking snowmen with glaring eyes and evil smiles in their yards. Jaclyn begins to notice that there aren’t any movie theaters, malls, or restaurants around. Then there’s the howling she hears every night while trying to sleep….

Ghost Beach: When brother and sister Jerry and Terri are visiting relatives on the beach for the last month of summer vacation, some local kids tell them about a ghost that lives in a cave off the shore. Of course the siblings don’t believe the locals and insist on investigating themselves, which turns out to be a spooky mistake.

The Haunted Mask: Carly Beth finds a perfect mask at a Halloween store. It has green skin, pointed fangs, and sinister eyes. She realizes soon after buying it that, when she puts it on, she can’t take it off. Not only does the mask change her outward appearance but it changes her inner personality too, making her more like a savage animal.

One Day at Horrorland: The Morris family gets lost while trying to find Zoo Gardens Theme Park. Instead they stumble across a place called Horrorland. They think it’s a joke at first until they realize that there are no lines, admission is free, and there’s hardly another soul in sight. That alone is creepy enough but they’re in for a surprise when they visit the attractions, which include the House of Mirrors, the Doom Slide, and the Coffin Cruise.